Varieties of Variation

When considering a sequence of movements, e. g. putting on a nicotine patch and chewing some gum, to be behavior-modifying, there can be the tendency to casually analyze it as a variation with respect to the sequence that it thwarted, e. g. smoking a cigarette, namely, with respect to what could have occurred, but did not. Such an analysis, favored by some contemporary Philosophical schools, misplaces the object of comparison. The new sequence is first and foremost a variation with respect to habitual sequences that have already occurred, not to some non-occurring counterfactuality. But variation is not restricted to transpiring with respect to some previous general theme. Taking a walk after having been reading is a variation with respect to the latter. Furthermore, variation is not necessarily a relation between sequences of movements. An improvising musician might, only upon hearing the previous note, play the next one, and if the artistry involved is accomplished enough, the seamlessness of the transition can absorb that the new note is a variation on the preceding note or notes. In other words, continuation entails variation, even if the new note is a repetition of the previous one. As Deleuze has profoundly noted, the chronic tendency to understand Repetition as a mode of Identity has obscured that it entails Differentiation--the simple addition of the same type of item is a variation in quantity. Even Nietzsche seems to have missed that Recurrence is a mode of Differentiation. In other words, more of the same actually varies 'the same'.